With all the talk of Intel vPro Technology around platform manageability, security, and virtualization.... you may have missed something that got introduced with 32-nm Westmere systems (i.e. Intel Core i5 and i7 processors). It's called Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions, or AES-NI.

This would imply the applications use AES and have been recompiled to the optimized instruction set. With that, see the following silent video demonstration.

An automated script is used to encrypted 384MB of files using WinZIP version 14. The exact same processor and computer were used for the two part demonstration. The exact same automated session was used to click through and type items as needed. The only difference is whether AES-NI is used or not. In this recorded demonstration, you will noted the "non AES-NI" AES-256 encryption sequence takes 9.09 seconds, whereas the AES-NI run of the code only requires 3.64 seconds. That's a significant difference!

The numbers may very from one platform to the next since there are a number of variables that can be associated. In this case, the focus was just on the encryption. Encrypt\decrypt is a frequently used item in the business world.

Now you might be thinking... "Great... But, what applications are compiled to supported AES-NI"

Keep in mind - Intel vPro Technology platform is more than out-of-band management, security, and virtualization. It's also about improved performance\optimization for business applications. In this case - applications that use AES-NI.